This disclosure is concerned with animal nutrition diagnosis. More particularly the disclosure is directed to the testing and diagnosis of genetic issues relating to nutrition issues and disorders of companion animals, for instance dogs and cats.
Further this disclosure relates to a method, system and apparatus for the management of nutrition assessment in relation to animals worldwide. In particular, the disclosure relates to a bioinformatics system and its implementation in relation to animal biological, genetic and nutrition data.
More specifically the disclosure is directed to animal nutrition diagnosis and care, animal well-being and nutrition, and methods and systems for enhanced determination of these factors.
Breeders, owners, and caregivers of animals which can be companions, such as dogs, cats, horses, farm, food, or zoo animals, and wildlife, have a need to understand the nutrition and biological attributes, and related genetic makeup and disorder background, particularly in relation to nutritional features.
Substantial investments in time, effort and financial resources are made by the breeders, owners, and caregivers of these animals, particularly purebred animals, to characterize their nutrition state. There is also a need to conduct periodic comprehensive nutrition assessments of animals.
The probability that an individual animal will develop a specific nutrition-related condition in its lifetime is a product of complex interactions between its genetic makeup, environmental influences including diet, and agents of disease (e.g., chemical, physical, or biological) that the animal encounters.
The physical attributes and other descriptive and nutrition assessment information are generally termed in this application as the phenotypic information. Genetic trait or disorder information is termed in this application as the genotypic information. Generally, these are two distinct and differing sets of information.
Current laboratory and research systems and computerization have not achieved comprehensive nutrition assessments of animals, and nor have communication protocols been used effectively in this technological area to facilitate such a relationship, or to provide relational bioinformatics database systems for management and dissemination of comprehensive and cumulative information for individual animals.
More specifically, it is necessary in animal nutrition diagnosis and care for comprehensive nutrition assessments of animals for diseases and disorders of animals be achieved in order to reduce morbidity and mortality, and improve the quality of life and lifespan. Currently this is not done in relation to the nutrition assessment data of an animal together with the genetic data related to that same animal. Current tests do not provide as much data as possible to attain correct nutritional diagnosis and disorder predictions with the net result of an improvement in the quality of life and increased longevity.
Various attempts have been made to customize a nutrient or food products for a specific animal and various methods have also been proposed, but these are not definitive when applied to different animals or species of animals.
The fields of nutrigenetics and nutrigenomics have opened the way in humans for “personalized nutrition”, as pharmacogenetics and pharmacogenomics have led to the concept of “personalized medicine” and “designer drugs”. Similar scientific advances and concepts are being applied to the nutrigenetics and nutrigenomics of animals. In other words, by understanding animal nutritional needs, animal nutritional status, animal physiological or pathophysiological conditions, animal functional genomic profiles and animal genotypes, nutrigenetics and nutrigenomics should enable better management or control of the health and well-being of individual animals or a group of animals by precisely matching their nutrient needs or dietary composition with their unique genetic makeup.
“DNA polymorphisms” (i.e. SNPs) have been used for animal genotyping, in order to identify breed characteristics, or disease susceptibility, or have been applied to group animal populations by one or more phenotypic traits according to the frequency of a set of genetic alleles.
The “functional genomic profile” is another technique used to identify breed characteristics, or disease susceptibility or is applied to group animal populations or an individual animal one or more by several phenotypic traits according to the pattern of gene expressions (genomics), or protein expressions (proteomics) or metabolites (metabolomics).
The specific interaction between the nutritional environment and the genome of an individual has been termed the molecular dietary signature of that individual
It is important for nutritionists or other animal food professionals to prescribe or recommend nutrient needs or diets on the basis of more precise knowledge of how nutrients or food components interact at the level of the genome, where these constituents act by “up- or down-regulating” a set of target genes. Animal nutritionists or other animal food professionals should design nutrients or foods tailored to the genome or genomic profile or to prescribe or recommend the inclusion of specific molecules in the diets of animals to optimize physiological homeostasis, disease prevention and treatment, and productive or reproductive performances. Individualized nutrition requires an even more refined technique or approach than is currently available or applied.
The disclosure also relates to the application of pharmacogenetics to animals, namely the pharmacology dealing with the influence of genetic variation on the drug response of individual animals. It correlates the expression of genes or single-nucleotide genetic polymorphisms (called SNPs) with the efficacy or toxicity of a pharmaceutical product. The pharmacogenomics application of the disclosure relates to the identification and development to design and/or optimize pharmaceutical product therapy by taking the animal patient's genotype into account, and thereby improve pharmaceutical product efficacy with minimal adverse effects.
The disclosure also relates to pharmacogenomics as applied to a single or a few gene interactions with pharmaceutical products. The pharmacogenomics application of the disclosure considers the whole genome application of genetic technologies as they apply to the drugs and characterization of pharmaceutical products.
The development of genotype-specific pharmaceutical product therapy provides individuals with the opportunity for having increased efficacy and lower toxicity than currently available drugs. Several dozen polymorphisms of human pharmaceutical product—metabolizing enzymes have been characterized to date, but this has not been applied to animals who may have similar polymorphisms. The disclosure relates to the type and dose of pharmaceutical product prescribed for an animal as influenced by genotype.